Posted
by
samzenpus
on Wednesday December 03, 2008 @07:48PM
from the talk-charging dept.

alphadogg writes "It's possible that in the future conversations on your cell phone could generate enough electrical power to run the phone, without batteries.
That's one possible outcome of recent work by a team of Texas researchers, who appear to have discovered that by building a certain type of piezoelectric material to a specific thickness (about 21 nanometers, compared to a typical human hair of 100,000 nanometers), you can boost its energy production by 100 percent. And the technology could power not just phones, but a whole range of low-power mobile devices and sensors. The breakthrough is an example of 'energy harvesting' that can convert one kind of energy, such as vibrations or solar rays, into electricity."

Because I rarely talk on my phone more than 10 minutes during the course of a month. And I still like to be able to receive calls on a random basis. Voice powered calling is worthless for people that spend that kind of time carrying the phone around rather than talking on it.

A much better solution would be to put something in that converts the jostling motion that handhelds are constantly subjected to into power. Sort of like the old self winding watches.

Moderations often affect the tone of a message. A misplaced 'Insightful' mod can turn a joke into perceived ignorance. That can lead to negative moderations and a flood of comments trying to dispute it. It's not the most common thing in the world, but I've seen it happen several times.

That's not to say I'm against the idea of a funny comment being modded informative. I do, however, have a preference that people don't use Insightful mods solely to give funny comments karma. And yes, I've softened my stance a bit. Heh.